Correspondence - The Molly Weasley College of Household Witchcraft
I don't know any more about the clock, I'm afraid, but I do know a few things about the school, because a while back I saw a fibre-fic challenged and spent a while poking at it. The story I was working on isn't something I'd want to publish before it was complete, because it relies heavily on OCs, and I've only written two chapters out of eight, so it's going to stay in the WIP folder for a while longer. However, it means I can tell you the following info about her school by the time Neville and Harry are done with their apprenticeships:
- She rents out the kitchen at Longbottom Manor for her classes
- She changes out furniture depending on what she's teaching, shrinking unneeded things and keeping them in a box
- Her courses run for eight weeks at a time, one session a week, usually to groups of about six at a time
- She prints resource booklets for her students to take home
- Her 'Back to Basics' course is on continuous rotation on Wednesday nights - she starts a new eight-week course session as soon as the previous one is finished. Her other classes all alternate.
- At any given time she is running either
- 'Intermediate Cleaning' (Thursdays) or 'Intermediate Cooking' (Fridays)
- 'Too Many Jobs and Not Enough Hands: Simultaneous Spellcasting' (Mondays) or 'Knitting with Charms' (Tuesdays)
- 'Witchcraft for the Vegetable Garden' (Saturday mornings) or 'Useful Potions to Make at Home' (Saturday afternoons)
- 'Mending and Household Repairs' (Sunday mornings) or 'Cheaper by the Dozen: Cooking for the Extended Family' (Sunday afternoons
- She also has a course on 'First Aid and Childcare for the New Parent', and I'm not sure where that fits in the schedule
- She staggers the course start dates so she's not dealing with intake paperwork for four courses at once, but it's getting to be quite a bit of administrative work
- I'm planning for her to take someone on for a few hours of work a week dealing with correspondence, accounting, printing pamphlets and workbooks and so on
And, since you asked about it and I have it written, here's a snippet from the beginning of To Knit the Ravelled Sleeve of Care:
Over the past four years, the kitchen at Longbottom Manor had gradually become Molly’s domain. At least four times a week, every week, she gathered her students here, teaching them the spells, potions, and planning that kept a household running. It was not hers alone, of course - she shared it with Ebbet and Paskin, and the other Longbottom house elves. But they’d worked out a schedule to keep out of each other’s way, and she’d gotten used to where everything was kept, and for days like today she had a box of shrunken furniture she could use to make it comfortable.
At five o’clock, she came through the floo at the delivery entrance and made her way to her ‘classroom’ to get things set up. Today there was a new group of students starting her Knitting with Charms course, so it was a day for comfortable armchairs, not working around the table. Changing over the furniture was easily done, and after a glance at her class list, she set up a play area over by the windows as well. Alison Jones had brought her toddler to the other courses she’d attended; there was every reason to think she would do so tonight as well.
She wondered what the other students would be like. Julie Dickinson, that was another name she recognised, but the other four were unknown to her except for their letters applying to join the course. One of the things she had discovered she liked best about her teaching was the different people she met. Women young and old - not all women, but mostly - with all their different reasons for wanting to learn, and the stories they had to tell. Of course, some of them were obnoxious, or frustrating, or generally difficult, and some of them she didn’t really connect with, but others she would be glad to call her friends. And she thought that many of them did form friendships in her classes. Two months of learning together with someone could do that.